


Dictionary for a Dead Language

by britomart_is



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Estrangement, First Time, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Jossed, M/M, Memory Loss, Permanent Injury, Pining, Post-Apocalypse, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Weird Curtain Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-08-09 16:49:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7809736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/britomart_is/pseuds/britomart_is
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Under mysterious circumstances bitterly disputed by the historians, Sam Winchester said yes to Lucifer. Three years later, Lucifer is gone and the familiar landscape that the Winchesters once traversed is a burnt-out ruin of its former self — not to mention the damage done to Lucifer's vessel. Trapped in a grotesque parody of domestic bliss with a brother he no longer recognizes, a shell-shocked Dean has no reason to believe that happy endings exist for men like the Winchesters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_Excerpted from_ "Monster: Sam Winchester, the Man and the Myth " _by R.T. Lopez, New Cleveland Press, 2021._

 

Sam Winchester said yes. For all the mystery surrounding the circumstances of Lucifer's final incarnation, that plain fact remains indisputable: Sam Winchester said yes. 

Patty Nash, a former Miss Teen Nebraska with gently curling hair and copious, clumped mascara, shakes her head vehemently at his name. "Nuh-uh. No way. Not the guy I knew." She pauses, catching her lower lip between her teeth, eyes unfocused as she revisits a time and place long past. "You know, when I met him I think I knew which end of a gun the scary boom noise came out of, and that was about it." She laughs, displaying the sickly-pink wad of gum bitten down between her back teeth. "The others weren't much better off." Beneath Nash's fingertips on her kitchen table rests a messily handwritten list of her former compatriots. "There were a lot of us then. And we just flocked to him when he turned up. Not like all _new sheriff in town_. No fuss, no swagger, just, you know, taking the first night watch, correcting your stance when you were firing, just a careful little nudge to get you standing right." She laughs again, rosiness blooming over her high cheekbones. "I might've had a little crush. Just a little." 

Nash, now 40, is the only surviving member of a group of civilians-turned-vigilantes who learned to defend their small corner of the world under the tutelage of a capable, intensely private man who called himself Sam. Just Sam. Nash can account for three months of Sam's activities during the pre-Detroit era, and insists that at that time he showed no hint of the darkness that would guide his future actions. She doesn't deny that Winchester was ultimately responsible for the death of millions. "He saved my life. He wasn't—you know, you could tell that everything wasn't all right with him, I kind of figured he might be in trouble with the law. But he saved all our asses a hundred times over, so you don't ask too many questions." Earnest and intent, Nash leans forward over the chipped surface of her formica kitchen table, and the strength of her conviction makes this hard-bitten washed-up beauty queen suddenly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. "He was _good_." 

Ephraim Hale, 62, sits with a loaded shotgun in his lap for the duration of the interview. He drums the fingers of his one remaining hand against the arm of his chair as he speaks. "We knew what the sumbitch done, knew it were his fault Lucifer was walkin' around topside." Hale's encounter with Sam Winchester took place in Missouri some five months after Winchester parted company with Nash's band of civilians, and this meeting was not only intentional, but carefully orchestrated. "Six of us went in there, and I want you to understand we'd all lost somebody. All wanted to get our turn in. It weren't what you'd call clean. Now, time we were done—" Hale stops. "Some of the fellas were taking souvenirs. You get me? What was left where Winchester used to be standing, that weren't nearly—anyway, you get the idea, goddamnit."

Hale clears his throat. His fingers clench on the arm of the chair, and it becomes evident that their constant motion is to hide the shaking of his hand. Hale lost a lot of things in Missouri: his arm, his friends, and his nerve. "Now, uh." He stops, coughs repeatedly to clear his throat. "Well, reckon you know what happened after that." He pauses again. " _He_ came in. Not ashamed to say I pissed myself, any man would." Pause. "Well. You know what happened." The drumming of Hale's fingers quickens. "Five good men splashed all over the walls, Winchester sitting up and coughing up blood, and I'm standing there with my boots full of piss and no idea why my arm's tingling so damn bad." 

Hale laughs, then, in a way that would make a reasonable man nervous for his safety. "You know, there were a lot of dead hunters back then. And we all thought, well, they fucked it up. They failed, Winchester killed them before they could kill him." Hale's grin looks like it could crack teeth. "I'm thinkin' now they did kill him, maybe all of them did, every time. And _He_ just kept on bringing him back." 

Looking down, perhaps at the ever-present shotgun, perhaps at some vision of the past, Hale's voice grows uncharacteristically quiet. "Kid didn't fight us, not really. I almost think—" A pause again. "He almost seemed glad to see us, even with our guns up in his face." Hale's fingers flex and clench. "Don't think he'd seen a human face in a good long time. Except the Croats." 

As Hale continues, still far-off in memory, a dark patch spreads on the front of his pants. The stench of urine floods the room. He doesn't seem to notice. "I'll never forget, long as I live. I was standing there not sure if I was alive or dead, and this kid I just—this kid whose _brains_ were on my _boots_ weren't five minutes earlier—he spits out blood and he looks around at these men who killed him, who've got their guts strewn all over the damn place, and then he looks up at me and he says, 'I'm sorry.'" Hale's shaking hand curls around the stock of his shotgun, and it's clear that this is a man who couldn't fire a gun anymore if his life depended on it. "Think he meant it, too." 

James Lee is a slight, handsome 19 year-old who often speaks with his head bowed, as if to duck beneath the radar of the controversy that's followed him for half his life. A wry smile twists his face as he says, "I know nobody believes me. I don't really care. I'm going to keep telling the truth anyway and it doesn't matter if not a single person ever believes me." Lee's words tumble out in a pressured torrent. He stirs the foam on his cappuccino in endless circles. 

If Lee's story is true, and not the fanciful invention of a traumatized child, then he is the last human ever to see Sam Winchester alive. The skeptics have good reason to doubt: when the alleged encounter took place, Lee was only ten years old, orphaned and wandering alone in the desolate industrial landscape outside Detroit. "It was all about being hungry at that point," he says. "That and trying to hide. That's how I survived at all, I was quiet and I hid." He sips his coffee delicately, with the air of someone who's spent his formative years constantly under attack either physical or rhetorical. "I think maybe it was the same for him. He was so thin, you know? And he looked tired. He was a hell of a lot bigger target than me and—well, you've heard the stories, too. People after him. The—" Lee pauses, as if pronouncing an obscenity, "—hunters." He sips his drink, then sets it down abruptly, blurting out, "I meant to go south, you know, so it'd be warm? I kept trying to go south but there was no _food_ , and there were Croats everywhere, bridges collapsing, roads washed out, and I just went wherever I could scavenge a meal and sleep under shelter. And food and shelter—I always found them in one direction. Toward Detroit. Like something was _pushing_ that way." 

Lee's story—so endlessly dissected in the public search for both insights and falsehoods—hardly needs repeating here, its much-debated details already seared into our collective imaginations. Lee, a terrified and dehydrated ten year-old, stumbling into Winchester's camp in desperation to steal his canteen. Finding himself wrapped in a blanket and eating the lion's share of a roasted squirrel, swimming in an oversized coat. Watching the emaciated Winchester's meticulous routine of pushups and gun-cleaning and marking out sigils on the ground. Bedding down next to him for the night, feeling a little safer for the companionship. 

It's the events of the next morning that bring a haunted look to Lee's expressive eyes, even to this day. "It was cold. The warehouse was drafty and I remember there was frost in his hair, and mine too. It crunched when I touched it." Despite his visible discomfort, Lee looks up as he speaks, as though punishing himself with his honesty. "He didn't get out of bed—well, of his sleep sack. He was awake and all, but he just didn't get up. He was talking to himself. Kept saying 'no.' And I figured—y'know, just another adult fucking losing it." Raising his voice, Lee suddenly grows fierce, no trace of meekness left in him. "My father drank himself to death. Couldn't face what was happening to the world outside. And I'd just _had it_. I thought this guy was gonna save me, and then it looks like he's just losing it, like he's just another—you know, some grownup who's more broken than I am, and I'm just a kid at that point." 

Lee pushes his coffee away, to the other edge of the table. "So I walked away." An audible deep breath, then another. "I took his canteen and I ran." Lee forces his gaze up again. "And that's why I have to keep telling the truth. 'Cause I walked away and I'll never know what would've happened if I hadn't." 

Shoulders straightening, Lee unfurls from his protective stance and dips a hand into the pocket of his coat—a military-green jacket which, come to think of it, is far too large for Lee's small frame. His clenched fingers proffer a photograph that Lee has never permitted to be reprinted in any magazine, though it is Lee's most compelling evidence that his story is true. The snapshot is faded, yellowed, but clearly visible are two handsome young men with arms slung around each other's shoulders. The men pose in front of a sign welcoming tourists to Foamhenge, the carefully-replicated Styrofoam monument tiny in the background. The man on the right beams, turning his body inward so there's barely a sliver of space between the two. The man on the left looks mildly embarrassed, but the depth of his dimples betrays a certain delight. "This was in the pocket," Lee says. He examines the photo closely, wonderingly. "Look at him smiling like that." He withdraws, tucking the photo carefully back into a pocket like a sacred relic. In a world of lost faith, Lee believes in Sam Winchester's smile. His is a lonely religion. 

James Lee walked away from that makeshift campsite on April 30th, 2012. There is no record of the events that followed until two days later, when a man described as tall and handsome, dressed all in white, walked into Detroit and burned the city to the ground. 

This was the man who was once Sam Winchester. 

After piecing together these accounts of Winchester's last months, the burning question that remains is: why? Why would a man who'd fought his whole life to defend humanity, who fully understood the consequences of his actions, say yes to Lucifer?

Only one man has ever known the answer to that question, and that man died on a cold morning in Detroit. Sam Winchester cannot answer us.

#

_Detroit, 2012._

 

"Yes."

When Sam was at Stanford, a classmate of his, an extroverted athlete named Garrett who used to gently bully Sam into pickup soccer games, jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. An average of nineteen people per year jump off the bridge and into the San Francisco Bay two hundred and fifty feet below them. The fall takes about four seconds. Four seconds, perhaps, take a lot longer. Sam's walked along the bridge at night when the cars are gone—it's a lonely place, standing in the middle with empty road stretching out on either side of you. Even though you can see the city lights, it's like the rest of the world has ceased to exist. 

There were sound-bite reasons why Garrett did what he did—a blemished grade-point average, a torn ACL, playing the pronoun game and telling his parents about a girlfriend who was in reality a six foot tall baritone—but in Sam's mind, it all came down to the split second it takes to make the worst mistake of your life, and all the seconds after that when you can't take it back. 

Sam never knew Garrett well enough to earn the right of trying to get inside his head, but in quiet moments while flipping a textbook page or loading up a tray full of food, his mind defaulted back to thinking about Garrett on the bridge. Sam wondered what he thought right _after_ he let go, in the long seconds before he hit the water. Maybe he regretted it the moment his fingers left the rail. Maybe he would have taken it back if he could. Maybe he would've given anything to close that swiftly-increasing space between him and the handrail and be back on that lonely bridge. Maybe. But by then Garrett was already falling. 

The _yes_ leaves Sam's mouth, and in the very next moment, he remembers. Strawberry ice cream melting down his hand on summer afternoons. The first time he rode a bike, wind rushing past like flying. A casual touch ruffling his hair, easy affection taken for granted. The look on Dean's face when Sam caught him frenching the quarterback in his senior year of high school. Jess, sleepy in the mornings and burrowing under the sheets to escape the sun. The worn-in passenger seat of the Impala. Freckles. Mint toothpaste. Dean singing in the shower. Companionable silence. Going to sleep and knowing he won't wake up alone. 

Human life is short and painful and flickers out without fanfare, and that will never change. And it's worth it. Sam remembers now. 

The light is very, very bright. 

Sam hits the water.

#

_New Wichita, the Former United States of America, 2015._

 

There's this amiable Chinese lady and this Salvadorian dude running kind of a fusion restaurant out of the back of a former McDonald's. The ball pit in the PlayPlace is full of chickens and there's a guy with a rifle in the takeout window. It's good food, spicy and greasy and perfect for Dean's cast-iron stomach, but since the collapse of the money economy it's been a real pain in the ass to barter for anything. Dean doesn't have much that other people want. Fortunately, Mrs. Zhang gives Dean all their used cooking oil, grateful to have someone to clean it up. 

Dean's not as young as he used to be, and he's praying to no one in particular that his back doesn't give out as he drags the heavy buckets of oil across the parking lot and wrangles them into the trunk of the car. He's already cringing in anticipation of the messy, smelly hours he'll have to spend turning oil that still smells like kung pao chicken into usable biofuel, but it's that or give up his baby. So yeah, he'll deal with it. 

Karen's house is on the other side of town, and Dean curses a blue streak over the state of the roads as the car bump-thuds its way over broken asphalt. Karen comes out onto her porch when Dean rolls noisily onto the gravel driveway. She squints at him suspiciously and wipes her hands on her apron, which is covered in unidentifiable stains. 

"You got it?" Dean asks. 

"Yeah, I got it," she says, stone-faced. "Let's see the goods." 

Dean grumbles as he wrestles his offerings out of the car: a can of fuel from his last batch, and a battered box of refilled shotgun shells. He opens the box to show it's all there. 

Karen inspects her payment and, apparently satisfied, turns on her heel and lets the screen door bang behind her as she disappears into the old farmhouse. She re-emerges with a small cardboard box wrapped in twine. "You be careful with this. Don't you jostle it, drop it, shake it, or leave it near anything hot. You hear me?" 

Dean resists the urge to back up a few steps. "Yes'm." He takes the box carefully, half-expecting it to blow up in his face the moment he touches it. 

The screen door bangs shut, and the wooden door shortly behind it. Dean hears locks turning. He blows out a breath as he returns to the car, meticulously situating the box on the passenger seat. He glances back at it, reconsiders, puts it in the footwell. Then puts it back on the seat. Thinks about putting a seatbelt on it. Dean starts the car up and hopes for the best. 

When he gets back to the house, he pulls right up to the garage workshop to offload his cooking oil. Collects the box delicately from the passenger seat and starts in on the locks on the front door, then has to kick it when it's stuck in the warped frame. The house is quiet, still full of light, though it'll be pitch black when the sun goes down. 

Dean sets the box in the middle of the kitchen table and cuts the twine with his knife, slowly pulls back the lid to reveal its contents. He gives a low whistle. 

That there is one hell of a _cake_. The finest soy and carob the black market has to offer, and Karen swore up and down there was real sugar in it—however she got her hands on sugar, Dean doesn't want to know. 

Dean clomps down the hallway. At the end of the hall, he knocks on the half-open door out of vestigial politeness. Then he just walks in. 

Sam is standing in the middle of the room, looking at the window. Right where Dean left him. 

"I'm back." Dean walks around to Sam's front. "I'm back now." 

In the silence, Dean can hear a branch tapping at the window, mice skittering in the walls. With a hand on Sam's shoulder, Dean turns him and walks him down the hall. Sam sits when Dean pushes him down. The chair creaks alarmingly—Sam's a skinny fucker these days, not like he used to be, but he's still a big guy. Dean decides to go into town tomorrow and look for furniture to liberate—most of the empty buildings have already been ransacked, furniture burnt for warmth ages ago—but you never know. 

Dean sits across from Sam. "So, uh. I couldn't find any of those little candles." He tries to push the cake into Sam's line of sight, but it's hard since Sam isn't looking at anything in particular. "So you should just make a wish. Okay? Just make one anyway." Sam sits and stares. 

It's not Dean's wish to make, but he can't help sending out a _Jesus, please, fuck_ anyway. 

Dean cuts the cake and pushes a slice toward Sam. He puts a fork in Sam's hand and there, Sam's got it now, brings the fork to his mouth and eats obediently. 

"And the baker probably whacked someone for that sugar, so. Y'know. Appreciate it." Dean gets his own mouthful, and, well. If you're expecting chocolate cake it's fucking disgusting. But if you've been eating potatoes and possum and stale Fritos for the last few years, it's pretty awesome. 

Sam finishes his cake with a smear of frosting on his upper lip. Dean thumbs it off for him, then impulsively wraps his arms around those unresponsive shoulders and squeezes, nose in Sam's neck. Sam still smells like himself. Dean closes his eyes and, just for a second, he pretends. 

He pulls back and looks at Sam. "Anyway." He clears his throat. "Happy birthday." 

Sam sits. And stares. 

Dean cleans up from the cake, rustling paper and clanking dishes deafening in the quiet house.

#


	2. Chapter 2

It begins in a muddy field.

When Dean and the other survivors figure out how to finally, _finally_ rip Lucifer from this earth and send him home for a nice warm bath in the lake of fire, that's supposed to be the end of Dean's troubles. Save the day. Ditch the survivors, wish 'em best of luck not getting killed, because in a world with no Lucifer their survival is no longer his responsibility. Put his brother's body to rest. Lay down and die somewhere, which Dean thinks of with the same yearning he once reserved for retiring to Hawaii surrounded by buxom cheerleaders and drinks with umbrellas in them.

Once Lucifer's gone, Dean's greatest remaining problem is supposed to be finding enough fuel to burn Sam's body.

That all goes to hell—so to speak—when they banish Lucifer, Dean comes to collect Sam's body, and it's still breathing. _Alive_ , Dean thinks, might be too generous a term.

Dean's first impulse is that a bullet to the brainstem would be the most efficient way of dealing with this situation. He rolls the body onto its front, straddles it as he thumbs the safety, and nestles the barrel against the little dip at the base of the skull, finger slipping behind the trigger guard. Between Dean's legs, the body inhales, ribs expanding. Its sides are warm where they touch Dean's thighs.

Dean keeps the gun trained on its head as he rolls the body back over. It has mud on its cheek, strands of messy hair falling over its closed eyes. Dean lets loose a string of obscenities as he points his gun away. He did not sign up for this shit.

When Marcus Preston's safety clicks off, Dean swings the barrel in his direction without even thinking about it. He meets Preston's eye, lets him remember just how many men Dean's put out of their respective miseries.

"You just saved all our asses and you're going to shoot us now? To save the devil?" Preston says, gun hand white-knuckled. "I don't think so."

Dean just needs to get his head straight. He just needs a moment to _think_ but the body keeps _breathing_ , and when twigs snap beneath the feet of twitchy-looking hunters, Dean feels his lip twitch, nearly bares his teeth. Feels something animal inside him rolling to its feet, prowling forward, growling low. He keeps his gun hand steady. "Didn't think you'd really survive that fight anyhow. If anyone's still breathing an hour from now I'm gonna go ahead and call it a bonus." Still listening for movement behind him, he leans down to examine the body. It has a five o'clock shadow coming in. With a hand on its abdomen, he feels its stomach gurgle.

Dean tries, tries _hard_ to straighten his legs and walk away. But there's no part of Dean that's going to let a former grocery clerk with a .45 riddle this body with bullets. He tries his best to stop kneeling in the mud and stand up, but his body ignores his commands. Standing up doesn't work until he tries it with the body slung limp and heavy over his shoulder.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Risa's the only one who doesn't look like she wants to put a bullet in the body. She looks like she wants to put a bullet in Dean.

Dean's knees protest the dead weight he's carrying. "No freakin' clue. You'll figure something out." And they will. Without Dean. Dean's job is over.

 _Over_.

For lack of a better idea, Dean takes the breathing body with him, lays it down in the back seat of the Impala and starts driving. Nearly shits his pants when he swings open the door at a rest stop to check on it and its eyes are open. It doesn't respond to word or touch, and eventually Dean sits it up and starts driving again, gaze flicking nervously to the rear view mirror to check on the body's blank stare.

The car blows a tire just outside of what used to be Wichita, and Dean figures that's as good a sign as any. Night is falling, and Dean isn't quite ready to trust that all the Croats are gone. He walks in through the open door of an abandoned house, looks around, and then hauls Sam's body in like a sack of potatoes. And that's pretty much as close to _home sweet home_ as he's ever been.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day Dean's taking a nice long piss in the chipped porcelain toilet, desperately glad that it was hooked up to a backyard septic tank and not the defunct city sewers, when a troubling thought starts gnawing at his belly. He zips up and goes to the bedroom where he'd laid out the body, unsettlingly still, its eyes staring up at the wood-beamed ceiling. He'd covered the body in the quilt he found on the bed, a joyous whirligig pattern hand-sewn for someone who was once loved, someone now dead. Dean runs a thumb over the body's cracked lips, pinches a fold of skin on its arm and frowns at the lack of elasticity. 

Dean sits the body up against the headboard and drags his own meager water supply out of the trunk, bringing back a generous cup and settling on the bed next to the body. He grips its chin, opens its jaw a little, tips the tin cup and hopes for the best. The body chokes, coughing weakly, then stronger, lax face betraying no hint of reaction to the discomfort. Dean swears and thumps its back, then tries again, careful now, tipping just a little water past those cracked lips and massaging the body's throat with his other hand. It swallows. Dean jumps a mile, spilling a few drops, then feels a swell of triumph. He diligently eases the rest of the water down the body's throat, and then applies himself to the task of food, meeting similar success with getting the body to mechanically chew and swallow bits of a Snickers bar. 

The next week passes in a haze of worry, resentment, exhilaration over each small victory, discouragement at each failure, and bone-deep exhaustion running through it all as Dean tests out the boundaries of this body that is now—for better or for worse—in his care. If Dean pulls it up to its feet, it can stand up straight—and will continue to stand without complaint until Dean sits it down again. It can walk, if nudged along. Thank _fuck_ , it can take a piss on its own, even clean itself up (and Dean's pretty goddamn grateful for his stash of stolen toilet paper, even if somewhere out there Chuck is cursing his name.) 

The first time Dean tries to kill his brother, he leaves the body lying in the back bedroom and drives for two days. He pulls onto a dirt road in a forest, lets the engine sputter to silence, and allows himself taste the gunmetal he's been craving. An hour later, Dean's pistol is in the footwell and the road's slipping swiftly beneath the wheels on the way back to Wichita. Two days. He's two days' drive away. It takes three days for the human body to fatally dehydrate. 

Dean makes the return trip in less than twenty-four hours, fishtailing on the curves. 

The second time Dean tries to kill his brother is after meeting a woman (tall, with stunning crow's feet and a creased photograph of two little boys in her wallet) at the local speakeasy and bringing her home. She laughs and pushes him against the front door and the corners of the walls seem less sharp, less brutal. Dean fucks her in his barely-used bed, and the sweat hasn't even cooled in the small of his back before he's aching for her to leave so he can go spoon his vegetative ex-Satan little brother. After the door closes behind her, Dean curls up in the better-used bed and tugs the pillow from beneath the body's head. He presses gently until he can hear the body's breathing begin to strain. Just the littlest bit. "You wouldn't have wanted to live like this," Dean says. He smoothes a hand over the pillow, chasing creases, caressing. He lingers, neither pressing nor pulling away, until his back begins to ache from bowing over the body. "Well, fuck you anyway, you bastard. I don't care what you would've wanted. This is all your fault." 

The past tense strikes Dean as he's tucking the pillow back beneath the body's head. Dean couldn't kill Sam even if he really wanted to, because this thing lying here isn't _Sam_. There hasn't been a Sam in years. 

Dean takes the pillows out of the bedroom for a few weeks and lets them both sleep with stiff necks until the temptation passes. 

The last time Dean tries to kill the thing that isn't Sam, it's halfway there already. Its fever hits a hundred and five before Dean even realizes anything is wrong. The body's been dying for days, and it couldn't tell him. Even after he sees the shivers, notices the body's gray pallor, Dean leaves it shaking and sweating for most of a day while he _wishes_. This is a good death. A natural death. Merciful. If only the body would just hurry up. Dean waits, and wishes, and before the sun goes down he's dragging the body into a cold bath, whispering apologies even though there's no Sam to hear them. 

Dean shepherds the body around the house and tips water into its mouth, the walls slowly closing in and the deafening silence beginning to whisper and giggle, until the night the insomnia gets the best of him and he rolls out of bed to check on the body in the other room, check the locks on the doors, pace until the creaking of the floors becomes unbearably loud. 

He knows something's wrong the moment he walks in and hears the labored, gasping breaths. Dean stumbles over his own feet getting to the bed, visions of the body choking on vomit or facedown in the pillow. Neither is true—the body is lying flat on its back as always, but fucking _hyperventilating_. Dean crawls up beside it, hands brushing and patting, searching for a bone to set, a wound to stitch. 

What he finds is iron-tight muscles, a fine trembling, and those horrible panting breaths. Dean hovers over the body, no idea what to do, certain that it's dying and suddenly sure that its death would be a very, very bad thing. He stretches out next to it, staring at the ceiling and restraining himself from resting a hand on the body's heaving chest. 

In the dim moonlight filtering through the curtains, Dean sees what he didn't before. He reaches over, fingers brushing the wetness on the body's face, and confirms his suspicions. The body—the dead man—the blank-faced cipher—is crying. 

Dean's heart starts thumping fit to bust his ribcage. He squirms closer to the body and watches it cry and shake in its sleep. This is horribly, creepingly familiar. If there's one thing Dean should be able to recognize, it's his brother in the grip of a nightmare. Years of experience holler at Dean to curl up around the trembling body, keep it warm and safe. He doesn't. Dean stares at the body, feeling like this is a song whose words he's forgotten, just little snatches of the tune darting in and out of his head. 

Shying away from touching the body, Dean tucks his face up next to its ear and says something that comes to him slowly, like a native language long forgotten. "Sam." 

The body sobs a breath, and Dean's fingers twitch. Dean shifts uncomfortably. He runs a hand over the body's face, feels the cold sweat on its brow. "Hey." Dean doesn't know how to do this, except that he does. "Hey." The body is so warm next to him, so real. "I'm here."

Dead things don't dream. There's something—somebody—in there. It's having a nightmare. Sam is having a nightmare. 

Dean whispers reassurances to Sam until the shivers calm, feeling like an impostor as he recites the lines, _it's okay you're okay I've got you I'm here Sam Sam right here Sam_. 

And then, like taking tentative steps on a rotting floor that might crumble beneath him and send him crashing down: _Sammy_. 

Sam goes back to quiet sleep. Dean doesn't sleep at all. 

 

#

There's a cricket on Sam's face. Dean's going to brush it off in a second, 'cause it must be driving Sam _nuts_ , but he can't help waiting just a moment to see if Sam'll do it himself. He doesn't. Dean shoos the cricket. It hops down to Sam's shoulder. 

It's too stifling to be in the house—no air-conditioning, no fans, and fuck, what Dean wouldn't give for a cold beer—so they've retreated outdoors. Or rather, Dean's decided they need to be outdoors, and Sam hasn't exactly registered an opinion on the matter. Dean's calf-deep in the crick that runs behind the house, feet dangling over the edge as he reclines on the bank, jeans rolled up, boots lost somewhere behind his head. Sam's sweating through his t-shirt, hair in limp curls around his face, but he's staring placidly up at the summer sky. Always liked to look for the shapes in the clouds when he was little. 

"Okay, Sam. That's it." Dean sits up, starts working on Sam's shoes (and boy was it a pain in the ass to find clothes that fit the kid, the creepy white suit burnt to cinders as soon as Dean had the opportunity.) Shoes off, socks off, pant legs up. Dean pulls Sam up and wades him into the creek. "Better, right?"

Small fish brush past Dean's legs, and he curls his toes around the smooth rocks on the bottom of the creek bed. Wandering further downstream, Dean plucks at reeds and wonders if it ever gets wider, deeper, with bigger fish, and his stomach rumbles at the thought of a little dietary variety. 

Turning back upstream, he sees Sam standing motionless where Dean left him, which isn't unusual, but with an expression of mild distress on his face, which definitely is. Dean's _tried_ , tried tickling, joking, pinching the soft skin inside Sam's elbow, he's tried shouting till he's red in the face, tried pleading, cajoling, tried insulting Sam's virility, and through it all, Sam's been like the motherfucking Queen's Guard, face smoothly unconcerned. "If you need to piss, just do it in the stream," Dean says. "No one's gonna care." 

But Sam just keeps on standing there, tall and skinny like a slightly perturbed heron. Dean sighs and grabs Sam's wrist to lead him to shore. Sam's moving slowly, reluctantly, like when Dean had to drag him away from the scummy motel swimming pools as a child. "What, you want to stay in?" Sam just stands there, water swirling around his ankles, with the barest hint of a furrowed brow. "I'm not taking you swimming, dude. Chicks don't go for guys who let their little brothers drown in six inches of water." 

Dean plops them both down on the shore again and pulls on his own boots. When he kneels in front of Sam and picks up one of Sam's big feet, he drops it again with a startled yelp, because the sole of Sam's foot is covered in blood, a vibrant red that Dean, never, ever wants to see. "What the _fuck_ , Sammy?" Dean picks up the foot again, pulls it into his lap, and he has to wipe the blood away with the bottom of his shirt before he's able to see the shard of bottle-green glass wedged right in the sensitive flesh of Sam's arch. The viciously sharp glass is sunk deep into Sam's foot, and Dean curses as he thinks of Sam obliviously walking out of the stream with his full weight on it, driving it deeper. "You fucking _moron_ , Sam, something like this happens, you _tell_ me." Dean doesn't want to deal with this right here, but he physically can't carry Sam back to the house, and it's not like _Sam_ 's going to help him out. 

Fingers scrabbling in his brother's blood, Dean gets a grip on the motherfucking cocksucking day-ruining piece of glass and _yanks_. Sam is silent. Dean wants to howl on his behalf. Shimmying Sam's sock back on over his bloody foot, then guiding it into the shoe, Dean can't stop the torrent of words, nerves shattered. "You _stupid_ sonofabitch. When something bad happens, you shout. Scream. Cry like a baby. Throw a fucking tantrum. Don't just stand there like you're not even _in there_." Dean yanks too hard on Sam's shoelaces, knows it'll hurt. 

Later, patching up Sam's foot, Dean takes more care than is necessary. Winds clean white bandage over and around the arch, cradles Sam's heel in his hands and holds it for a moment. It's still sweltering in the house, air thick and dry, and Dean wants to escape the heat, but there's nowhere to run. Hot gusty breezes swirl in through the window screens and find Dean kneeling, head bowed over his brother's foot.


	4. Chapter 4

Sometimes Dean leaves Sam on the bed in recovery position so he doesn't suffocate and goes out. There's this sorta speakeasy in a ramshackle house down on Hawthorne Street, and Dean's pretty sure the bathtub liquor's going to turn him blind and crazy, but he's halfway to crazy already and if he's blind maybe he'll stop scrutinizing Sam's blank stare for sparks of life. 

"You're full of shit." The guy who owns the house—Dean thinks his name's Randy—is wiping down glasses with a dirty cloth. 

Dean raises his head off the bar, which is kind of splintery because it's made out of a door. "'Scuse me?"

"I said,"—the glass slams down—"you're full of shit. I see two arms, two legs, and you're not puking ectoplasm. War's over, son. What the fuck are you doing drinkin' yourself to death in this shithole?" 

"I come for the armchair psychology." Dean, already feeling a headache coming on, squints at Ralph. Too young for Vietnam, maybe the Gulf. Dean's known too many disgruntled vets to be intimidated by the whole gruff badass act, especially because he knows for a fact that Rudy keeps big fluffy rabbits in a hutch out back. Not for eating. They have names. "And I got eight." He puts his head back down. 

The door-bar shakes when another glass slams down. "Eight."

"Limbs," Dean clarifies, and nudges his empty glass over. "I got four arms, four legs, and one working brain." 

Brackish brown liquid spills a little around the glass, leaves a ring on the wood. Dean drags his finger through it, draws a wet Devil's Trap on the bar and watches it evaporate. Ronald waits, eyes fixed on Dean. 

"Brother," Dean fills in, and Roger nods. 

"You fought, huh. Saw some action." Dean takes a sip. It tastes like turpentine. "Your brother, too." 

Dean's fingers tighten around the glass. "Guess he did." 

Raymond pours a finger of moonshine in the glass he's just finished half-heartedly cleaning. "Sometimes a man just sees too much, don't ever come back from it." He toasts Dean grimly. 

Dean raises his glass in return, takes a long drink, chokes a little. Not much to say to that. 

"But you're still a fuckin' idiot." Rick finishes his drink, puts the glass back on the shelf still dirty. "You wanna be dead, be dead. You wanna be alive, stop moping in my bar, pickling your liver." 

"What, my money not good enough for you?" Dean's got a headache, he's a little unsteady on his stool, he's got a gun at his back, who exactly does Rodney think he is talking to Dean like that, Dean saved the motherfucking world. 

"You don't pay me," Robert says. He slowly wipes the rim of a bottle, shoulders slumped. 

Dean looks around. The house is empty. It's always empty, except for the woman who looks like a schoolteacher and wears knitted sweaters with cats and Christmas trees on them. She sometimes occupies the back corner, sipping rotgut with a thousand-yard stare. Roland's a little short on customers. Dean's a little short on friends. On human faces. On bodies that talk back to him. 

"This is good shit, Rupert. I think you're getting the hang of it. Gets you drunk _and_ removes paint." Dean pushes the glass back across the bar with the dregs still sloshing in the bottom. 

Outside, the air is night-crisp and the streets are empty. Dean weaves his way home slowly, tripping on cracks. If he's late enough, maybe there'll be someone waiting for him with a disapproving scowl. Maybe. 

Fuck, Dean needs to stop drinking. Makes him think the stupidest shit.

#

Storms batter the house in the night, whipping tree branches, making the old house groan. Dean ventures out in the morning and tramps across the yard for no good reason, just enjoying punching the first footsteps into the pristine snow—all his to mess up. When he was sixteen and sleeping in a tent, eating cold MREs and hunting Black Annis—then he hated winter. Now that Dean has a house to go back to, blankets and a fireplace and instant coffee powder, he's really more cheerful than he has any right to be.

Dean should know by now that if he's gleefully pissing his name in the snow, grinning up at the morning sun that glints off a million points of ice, something is about to go horribly wrong. He should know not to be lulled into some notion that Winchesters are allowed to have good days. 

But learning from his mistakes has never been Dean's strong point. So, humming to himself, looking at scarf-wrapped Sam where he's set him on the front porch, thinking about pulling Sam into the yard to throw snowballs at him later, Dean lets the ladder fall with a clatter against the side of the house and clomp-clomp-clangs up it to fix the solar panel that the storm tore askew. 

There's snow down Dean's collar where he's fallen in it—this is the first thing he recognizes. Then his brain registers the pain in his leg and it takes him over, makes him shout and writhe and curse the icy rooftop and curse snow and want to curl up into a ball and whimper until help comes to rescue him. With his breath whistling through gritted teeth, Dean cranes his neck to look at the porch. He sinks back into the snow, letting the wetness seep into his hair, soak his jeans, fill in all around his grotesque snow angel, because Sam is standing there on the motherfucking porch, carefully tucked into coat and hat and scarf and gloves because if he gets frostbite Dean has to deal with it, and he's staring mildly into the middle distance. Like he always is. 

"Sam!" Dean has to pant a little after he shouts, _damn_ he'd forgotten how much this hurts. "Sam, goddamnit. Get your _ass_ down here."

Sam's eyes drift over Dean's supine form, and a little frown creases his brow. His impassive face tentatively comes to life—fumbling, unsure, he makes his way down the porch stairs, falling to his knees at Dean's side, big hands patting over Dean's leg, testing the injury before Sam's gaze meets Dean's eyes and he says, "Dean—"

That's what should have happened. A minute passes, then another, and Dean's fantasy remains a fantasy.

The tall figure on the porch does nothing. And Dean is—Dean is _pissed_. Dean is fucking livid. Dean's been herding this ungrateful fucker around for the better part of a year and Jesus fucking Christ it _hurts_. Dean's pretty sure he's bitten through his bottom lip trying not to scream, and then he realizes that screaming is actually a really, really good plan. 

"Hey! Hey, somebody! I could use a hand over here! Is anyone out there?" Dean rocks a little from side to side, and every movement jolts his leg and hurts more but he can't stay still, needs to wriggle the pain out of his body somehow. He peers down at his leg, sees blood soaking through his pants at the epicenter of the pain below the knee and goddamn _fuck_. 

Dean has to laugh a little as he lies in the snow. Survive the goddamn apocalypse and die from breaking his leg, that would just—that would just be a fitting end to his life, wouldn't it? Dean's pretty sure that he could drag himself up to the porch. Pretty sure he could get to his keys, somehow get the car to the barely-functioning hospital in town without crashing. If he really wanted to. Dean's done impossible things before. But right now, he kind of just wants to lay here and hurt for a minute. He's kind of thinking—maybe the hypothermia would get him, maybe an infection from the break. He could lie here in the snow and look at the sky as he dies, and the figure on the porch would pretty much take care of itself by standing there quietly till its body shut down. And would that—would that really be so bad?

It's an hour of screaming himself hoarse before the crunch-crunch-crunch of snow on the road. An unfamiliar voice calls, "Hello?"

And Dean can't help the rush of relief, instinctive joy at being rescued. "Over here!"

Dude's name is Neil, he lives down the road with his one surviving daughter, and even after the war, he's the kind of man who'll think he hears a faint shout as he shovels out his driveway in the morning and will walk nearly a mile to see if someone's in trouble. When Dean grits out, "My brother. Can't leave him alone," Neil doesn't even blink, just gently takes the motionless body on the porch by the elbow and shepherds it into the passenger seat of the Impala, Dean already stretched out in the back. 

 

Dr. Garcia's kinda hot in a MILF-y sort of way, and she's got Dean seriously pumped full of the good stuff, which she apparently protects by sleeping in the hospital with a .270 deer rifle to ward off would-be looters, and that's the _only reason_ why he's spilling his guts to her. Morphine and really kinda nice breasts that are like, _right there_ under her white coat and scrubs when she leans over him. 

"I been thinking I prolly shoulda just … put a pillow over his face. Y'know?" Dean rolls his head over to look at her. She has that neutral doctor face on. "Guess you're not s'posed to do that." He cracks up. "Good for me, I guess. Or you'd shoot me like a horse. Right?"

Dean watches the twisting shadows her body casts on the wall as she moves around the exam table. The gas lamp dimness of the windowless room fills it with extra corners and depths, and the absence of squeaky nurse shoes and pages over the intercom and griping patients in the waiting room makes it not a real hospital. It's a dead hospital. 

"Is he always this unresponsive?" Garcia seems more fascinated by Sam than by Dean's maudlin, drug-fueled declarations. 

Dean snorts. "He's like a … really high-maintenance mannequin." Dean shakes his head, not quite sure where that image came from. "I just." Dean scrubs his face against the pillow. Morphine makes his eyes water. "If he was in there, he woulda come for me."

Whoa. Garcia's gone. She's not at Dean's side anymore, she like _disappeared_ —Dean rolls his head to the other side and she's over by Sam, who's sitting in an uncomfortable-looking chair, staring at the opposite wall. She's shining a little light in Sam's eyes. 

"I could run some tests," she says, looking back at Dean. 

Dean tries to get a good leer on his face, but he can only get half of his face to work, so it's a little lopsided. "Whatever you think's best, doctor. I'll cooperate." 

"For your _brother_ ," she says witheringly, little smile tugging at her lips, and damn, yeah, Dean could totally—wait. Dean's brain catches up. 

"Sam?" he says, baffled. 

"See what's going on in that head of his," Garcia says. "I can't send you home for a while, anyway. I'll have him back before you even wake up." 

"I'm not asleep," Dean says, heavy lids falling shut. At the sound of motion he flutters them open and sees Dr. Garcia guiding Sam, still roly-poly in all his thick layers of winter gear, out the door. "Hey, wait," he says, but she doesn't hear him, and then Sam's gone from sight. Garcia can't spare the supplies to light the whole hospital, so the dark of the hallways swallows them up. And maybe Dean was thinking Sam'd be better off dead for the last few hours (months) (years), but he's really sleepy and hospitals creep him out and his leg still kind of hurts and he _doesn't like it_ when someone takes Sam away where Dean can't see him. 

Dean scrubs stinging eyes against the pillow again, then lets his head fall back against it when he can't keep his eyes open any longer. 

If Dean were somebody else, he might have trouble figuring out what to make of the printouts Garcia sends him home with, but he's not somebody else, and he actually has a pretty wide range of experience from one or another Winchester's head injury or coma or impending death. One of those skills picked up unnoticed in childhood: some kids know by heart just the turn of wrist needed to keep the cake batter from clumping, some learn to cast a perfect fly from long hours at the lake with Dad. 

What Dean's got is the ability to make sense of an EEG, and what he's seeing is that _something_ —a whole lot of something—is going on in Sam's head. Sam's got brain activity like nobody's business, and now Dean is half-convinced that the kid's just fucking with him. Just too _stubborn_ to act like a normal person. And Garcia says that, much like a coma patient, there might be enough of Sam in there to hear people talking to him.

So naturally, Dean starts heckling him. "Hey Sam. Sam. Sam. If you don't say anything you agree that your hair looks stupid. If you don't talk you think I should shave your head. Sam. Sam. Sam cried at the end of _Beaches_. Sam takes Metamucil. Sam manscapes." 

Eventually, Dean just kinda gets in the habit of talking at Sam, response or no, and it's—kind of better than it was before. He gets used to it. The thick woolen layer of silence isn't quite so heavy, and Dean has something to entertain himself as he thumps around the house on crutches, all the time in the world now that he's not exactly taking on any new home improvement projects. He tells Sam about his sexual conquests, real and embellished. Recites the first part of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Charts a theoretical roadtrip across a United States that no longer exists, describing the snapshots they'll take at tourist traps that are now only craters. Sometimes when he's had too much bathtub gin at Randy's he talks about other things, about Dad and Stanford and watching Sam sleep and losing pieces of himself and the blood on his hands and Sammy I always loved you best, Sammy I don't think I can do this, Sammy I don't know how to take care of someone I'm not that person anymore. Sammy we are so screwed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience; I've been slow because I'm going through and adding new material. Posting pace should pick up after this.

#

Dean turns thirty-seven on a cold day in the ruins of the old world. He's hobbling around in a walking cast these days, but he sucks it up and goes into town, because like _hell_ is he going to sit at home and eat instant grits and Spam on his birthday. Dean stops by Randy's and toasts the shell-shocked schoolteacher in the corner with some kind of fermented corn beverage, rummages in the innards of a junker on the roadside for spark plugs, salutes the two prostitutes on Main Street, and swings by Mrs. Zhang's for Dong'an chicken and fried plantains. Mrs. Zhang cops a feel of Dean's ass on his way out and he _knew_ it, he _knew_ she didn't cut him so many discounts for nothing. He flexes his butt and goes on his way—plenty of Dean to go around—and burns his fingers when he steals a skewer of something off Ernesto's grease-splattered grill.

Dean left a fire going while he was gone, running the risk of burning the house down but ensuring that he won't return to a blue-tinged Samsicle. When he goes to put the sacks of food down, he finds Sam standing in the kitchen— _not_ where Dean left him. It freaked the fuck out of Dean when Sam first started wandering, turning up unexpectedly, and Sam seems to have a knack for doing it only when Dean's not looking. Drives him crazy. Sam's bumped up against one of the kitchen chairs, gazing placidly at a saucepan on the counter. Dean figures it's kind of like a wind-up toy car—Sam will walk till he hits an obstacle and gets stuck. 

"Thanks, Sam, it is a good birthday." Dean pulls food out of brown bags, encouraged by the grease that's seeped into the paper. “Real nice of you to ask." He pushes Sam in the direction of the living room, the only warm part of the house. 

They eat on the couch and Dean lets Sam take the half with the poking-out spring, 'cause if Sam has a problem with sitting somewhere uncomfortable he can damn well _complain_. He lets Sam try to eat with chopsticks for a couple minutes just because it's fucking hilarious, then takes pity on him and gets a fork. 

When Dean's in a comfortable food coma, belly full and leftovers tucked into a snowbank outside, he lets himself slump down on the couch, sunning himself in the heat. The firelight has a warming effect on Sam's pale face, makes him seem more alive. When Dean sat Sam down on the couch, he draped a blanket over his shoulders. Sam wears the blanket in much the same way that a wire hanger would. Dean shuts his eyes. 

"I think we should move. In the spring. So fucking _done_ with this Midwestern winter bullshit." He could really care less. He's seen every state except Hawaii, and they all suck more or less equally. And it's too late for Hawaii, since all but the volcanoes is underwater now. "Maybe Memphis. I hear it's pretty happening right now. Get to a big city, somewhere with more than two women under forty. I gotta cash in on the rugged older man thing, y'know? You'll be my wingman. Strong but silent type. Girls go crazy for that shit." 

Dean squints one eye open at Sam and the pleasant food coma burns away instantly. Sam is _looking_ at him. 

Sam never did understand what he did to people when he looked at them like that, all that caring and intensity and ferocious intelligence, focused on them like they were the only person in the room. Started when he was a little kid, the effect intensifying as he got older, handsomer. Worked on girls, on frightened witnesses, on officious mean old school secretaries. Worked on Dean. That look, man. 

Made you want to be the center of his world. 

And Dean was. Had been. Back in the day. He doesn’t know much, but he knows that. 

Sam is looking at him and Dean feels that thud in his heart like he’s back in his rightful place in the universe. 

"Sam?" Dean scrambles back up to sitting, faces Sam. Sam's eyes lazily track his movement. "Hey." Dean snaps his fingers in Sam's face, tries to regain eye contact. "Hey. Sam. Look at me." But the moment's gone. 

Everything in Dean _sinks_ , and all he feels is overfull and a little cold from the winter that seeps in through the cracks in the walls. Maybe next he'll be hearing voices, imagining that Sam's sending him messages in Morse code, reading Sam's tea leaves or coffee grounds or whatever. Dean's always known this about himself—that if he wants something enough, his brain might trick him into imagining that it's really there. Love, family, Sam. An oasis in the desert that shimmers and disappears when he gets too close. 

Those first weeks after Sam went away to Stanford, Dean still thought he could hear him breathing in the night from the next bed over. He’d whip around to check even though he knew better. And then during those last few dark years, when Sam was— was gone. Every time Dean saw a tall guy in flannel his gut would cramp with fear and joy, even though he knew, he knew it wasn’t, he knew the lanky figure he was looking for was decked out in a tacky white suit those days. On the latest nights, when he was so tired spots dotted his vision, he’d hear Sam’s voice sometimes right on the edge of sleep. 

You sorry sonofabitch, Dean thinks to himself. This is it, this is all you get. 

After putting Sam to bed, wrangling long limbs under the covers and bracing himself for when Sam's wordless sobs begin, Dean goes to the bathroom to brush his own teeth. You know what's a pain in the ass? Brushing your fully-grown brother's teeth. Yeah. Dean brushes, ignores his three-day beard, and looks in the cracked mirror. And Dean's not—he's not a young man anymore. He just isn't. Hasn't felt like one in a long time, and reality's slowly catching up to the hunched-over broken-down rusted old thing he's felt like inside since the first time he shot a man in cold blood. Something crushed and aching at the core of him and bleeding outward. Gray in his hair and lines on his face (ruggedly handsome, Dean tells himself, and if there were anyone to see but his crazy fucking brother, that might mean something) and the future stretches on ahead mercilessly. 

Dean hears the first of Sam's harsh dream-wrenched breaths, and he suddenly has to sit down on the cold tile, because this is _it_ , this is Dean's life now. The world may be slowly getting better outside, rebuilding and growing and finding hope, but this was never supposed to be Dean's world. He was never supposed to live this long. All he can see is himself, celebrating his eightieth birthday and nudging his septuagenarian brother around the house, still deluding himself that today might be the day the blank stares end. The floor is fucking freezing, but Dean can't quite get up, can't make his legs work just yet. 

Dean has a lot to pay for. Maybe this is fate's judgment upon him. He’s not good. He’s messed up. He’s done things he shouldn’t have and not done things he ought to. He wanted to keep Sam with him forever, wanted Sam to just do what he said for once, to be pliable, to need him. Wanted other things, maybe, that he wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t even supposed to think about. 

So this is what Dean gets. He gets to keep Sam. He gets him pliable. Gets to be needed. And Sam’s intelligent eyes and defiance and goofiness and interminable need to push back against Dean, Dean will never see again. 

A far cry from the last Hell Dean inhabited, but still. Maybe Dean Winchester is finally getting what he deserves.

#


	6. Chapter 6

The day after Dean turns thirty-seven, he sleeps in till noon and wakes to find himself wrapped around Sam, one of the hazards of being a full-time nightmare watchman. His eyes feel tight and dry and Sam is _really fucking bony_ , and Dean has a moment of sadness for the long and lithe man his brother used to be. Plenty of other things to mourn, but Dean just—doesn't have the energy. Dean rests the side of his face on Sam's chest while Sam, awake for who knows how long, stares unnervingly past the top of Dean's head. 

Dean runs a finger over Sam's Adam's Apple, because this Sam isn't exactly going to freak out over personal space, slap Dean’s hands away with an offended scrunch of his face. Mellowed by lethargy, Dean's quite content to stay where he is, rising and falling with the motion of Sam's breaths, pressing a hand against Sam's pulse point, into his hair, brushing the point of Sam's nose with a fingertip. Sam's stomach rumbles its discontent under Dean’s ear. There’s something he likes about being pressed right against Sam’s belly, listening to him even on the inside. Sam rumbles again. "Right, right. I gotcha.” 

Dean drags himself out of bed, wastes a little water to splash on his face and wake himself up. He's sniffing a takeout container of week-old scallion pancakes trying to decide whether they're still good when he turns around and Sam gives him a freakin' _heart attack_ , standing in the middle of the kitchen when Dean had left him lying down in bed. 

"Gonna put a goddamn _bell_ on you," Dean mutters, and he gently shoves Sam into a chair and continues puttering with the leftovers. "Collar. Freakin' … least a dog can fetch the paper. Like a cat, just ignore me and sleep all day."

The cold slithers down Dean's spine and impertinently sneaks up his boxers when he leans out the door to collect last night's chicken from the snowdrift. No critters have chewed the box open in the night. Score. Dean pads back to the counter, body trying to shiver the cold away. "You hungry, Sammy?"

"Yes."

"God, I miss refrigerators," Dean says. "And convenience stores." Dean frowns into the can of instant coffee. Almost all gone, and he has no fucking idea where he's going to get more. "Shit. I so do not want to deal with Karen. Psycho." His lip curls at the idea of having to negotiate with the surly baker again, but he has little desire to drive to Kansas City for some back-room bartering of his own. 

Dean grabs a big spoon and starts shoveling leftover chicken from its paper box and onto a plate, then freezes, brain catching up.

He can hear his own heartbeat, incredibly loud and quickening now, in his ears in the quiet of the kitchen. 

Sticky spoon still in hand, Dean turns around. A piece of chili pepper drops from spoon to floor with a squelch. Dean advances on the kitchen table, spoon raised like a weapon. He can't unclench his fingers from it. 

Dean gets down on his knees in front of the rickety wooden chair, and repeats himself, slowly and carefully. “Are you hungry?" 

"Yes." 

The voice is quiet, rough from disuse. Sam's head is angled down, and Dean can't see Sam's eyes behind his hair. He wants to tip Sam's face up but doesn't dare. Doesn’t dare move, or touch him, or speak, and break the spell. 

Sam’s chin lifts, and his gaze slides over to fix on an empty corner of the room. "Are we going to eat the spicy food again?"

Dean swallows hard, clutching his spoon. "Do you want to?"

Dean must be staring a hole into Sam he's studying him so hard, but he could fucking swear he can see the gears turning, see something happening behind those eyes. "No," Sam says after a moment. 

Standing up slowly and backing away, like he would from a dangerous animal that just might rip his throat out, Dean nods. "Yeah. Okay. No spicy food. The spicy food is out. Fuck it. Hate the stuff.” Dean bumps into the counter and jumps a little, startled, then glares at it. "We can—what do you want?"

Sam stares at the corner, and Dean feels his guts twist and cramp because that was too much, open-ended question, he ruined it, he fucked it up, he—

Sam's head twitches. He glances up at Dean, then back down at the floor, up again, almost experimental little peeks like he’s trying not to get caught looking. Sam's gaze finally comes to rest on Dean, still looking a little squirrelly. 

"I don't know," Sam says, and Dean will— will— he’ll get sushi. He'll get caviar, he'll get a caramel motherfucking Frappuccino with extra whip if that's what Sam wants, because Sam sounds confused and a little lost and like he's been practicing sword-swallowing for the last year, and Dean is—he's—feeling a little dizzy, actually. 

Dean vomits last night's plantains and half a scallion pancake all over the linoleum. He sits down next to the puddle and puts his head between his knees for a minute. Then he looks up at Sam, who is examining the half-digested mess with an untroubled expression. "Sam." 

"When you say that," Sam says haltingly. "Do you mean me?" 

"Yeah, Sammy." Dean's not sure what to make of that question. He wipes his mouth off. "You're Sam." 

Sam looks at Dean— _looks_ at him—and nods slightly. "Okay," he says. "Am I like you?”

“Hardly,” Dean scoffs reflexively, with a weak laugh, then hates himself when Sam’s face closes off. “Hang on, hang on, Sammy, what are you talking about? What do you mean, are you like me?”

“Am I a,” Sam says. “A, like a. Am I like a person?”

"A person." Dean swallows hard, mouth sour with bile. "Yeah, Sam. Yeah, you’re a person. Jesus.”

“Like you?”

“Wh— yes. You’re a person like me.” Dean feels as if someone has dropped him into the middle of someone else’s life, in some alternate universe where nothing makes any sense. 

"Was I always?"

“Yes.”

“And I’m Sam?”

“Yeah,” Dean says, and without meaning to he puts so much meaning into that word that he almost loses it, nearly starts fucking crying on the dirty vinyl floor. 

"Good," Sam says with a distracted, thoughtful expression. Then, forcefully: "I'm hungry." 

The options are kinda fucking limited, actually, so Dean ends up heating Spam and beans in a skillet, and he serves up a plate for Sam a little nervously. Which is stupid, because given Sam's propensity for standing exactly where Dean puts him and staring at the wall, he's unlikely to walk out on Dean over an half-assed lunch. 

Forks scrape plates. Dean gets nervous again because they can't talk and eat at the same time and it's been a few minutes since he heard anything out of Sam and Dean's been stuck in this goddamn house with a broken leg and snow all around and a silent spectre of a brother and maybe Dean only imagined that Sam talked because it's kind of a fucking miracle that Dean hasn't already gone crazy from claustrophobia and isolation except Dean doesn't believe in miracles not at all which would suggest that not only _is_ Dean crazy but Sammy _certainly_ didn't just wake up out of the blue—Dean puts his fork down. He breathes. 

"Does that taste okay?"

Sam finishes chewing a mouthful. "Yes." 

Dean's fingers twitch with excess energy till he comes up with something else to ask. "Are you cold?"

"Yes." And okay, yeah, Sam's in a tee and sweats and the house is cold and Dean can totally work with that. 

"Okay. I'm gonna get you something warm. Okay? Don't go anywhere.”

Dean step-thunks down the hall as quickly as he can with his leg in a cast, which isn't very quickly at all. He rifles through his drawers and comes up with a couple of his own flannels which'll probably even fit Sam now, he's lost so much muscle—but no. Dean puts the shirts back in the drawer and closes it. 

In the back of the closet, in the bottom of Dean's duffel, is something he hasn't allowed himself to look at in years. 

Dean remembers thinking at the time that Sam was gonna be pissed that he'd left his favorite hoodie mixed in with Dean's laundry. The too-small one that made Sam all boyish and broad-shouldered and wasp-waisted and had all the girls checking him out, even if he didn't notice. 

Dean had figured that he'd just return it the next time he saw Sam, 'cause even if they couldn't hunt together, even if for now they had to pick a hemisphere, it's not like he was never going to _see_ the kid again.

Sometimes the weight of Dean’s past stupidity is enough to crumple him, like a shipwreck imploding from pressure deep under the sea. 

Anyway, Dean never got a chance to give the hoodie back. 

And maybe once in a while he'd pull it out and look at it, soft and warm and brown, and maybe sometimes in those first years he fell asleep holding onto it, just 'cause he'd been too tired to put it back in the furthest corner of his bag. At first it smelled like Sam, so that when Dean had it in his hands it was this overwhelming presence, like Sam was there in the room with him, but the scent slowly faded until it was just a dirty sweater. Dean lost the sense-memory of what Sam smelled like not long before he heard about Detroit. 

After that, the hoodie went into the bag and never came out again. Dean could no longer afford that kind of sentimentality, and he had a job to do. 

But still. Every other shirt Dean owned back then is long since torn up for bandages or covered in blood or left behind to lighten the load. Not this one. 

When Dean gets back to the kitchen Sam has finished his own food and started on Dean's, long arm snaking out to spear chunks of Spam with his fork. Dean would like to think it's his little brother deliberately being a pain in the ass, but he's pretty sure that Sam's just not real clear on the idea of personal property. 

"This is yours," Dean says, and he has to force his fingers to uncurl from the cloth when Sam takes it. Sam just sits there holding the sweatshirt, so Dean adds, "Put it on." 

Sam stares at the hoodie like it's a Rubik's Cube, then fumbles with the zipper. 

And actually, Sam taught himself to solve a Rubik's Cube in under five minutes by the time he hit middle school, so Dean kind of wants to stab himself with a fork. "Do you know how?"

" _Yes_." Sam awkwardly works one arm into a sleeve, and Dean could swear Sam sounds defensive. Sam gets the sweatshirt on, rumpled and twisted, and Dean zips it for him. 

Sam looks softer in the hoodie, more human. Like someone you could touch. Dean bites his lip hard, trying to keep from doing something stupid, something he'll regret. He does it anyway. “Hey, Sam?”

Sam looks up at him. 

"Do you know who I am?"

"Yes," Sam says, looking a little affronted. "You're—" A big hand splays against the tabletop as Sam searches for words. “You’re always here. You talk. And bring food. And fixed my foot." 

Sam's voice reminds Dean of a thirteen year-old Sammy, the special 'duh, Dean, _obviously_ ' tone, and Dean's never missed that bratty teenager so much. Dean clears his throat, tries not to crumble. "But is there anything else? Anything else you remember about me?"

Sam's gaze goes distant, considering. Dean's begun noticing that Sam's facial expressions are always a little slow, tentative, like he's just figuring out what faces are for. Dean thinks he sees a slight upturn of Sam's lips. "You're there when I wake up." Sam thinks for a moment, then hesitantly offers: “You call me Sam.”

"Yeah."

“What do I call you?"

Dean feels like he's been kicked in the solar plexus, and unlike most people, he's actually been kicked in the solar plexus on a semi-regular basis for most of his life, so he knows what he's talking about. "It's Dean. My name's Dean."

"Dean," Sam says. Then again: _Deeeean_ , stretches his mouth around the sounds, tries out the feel of it. Seems to like it. “Good. I’m glad I have a name for you." Sam's smile is slight but real, his voice hoarse. He meets Dean’s eyes, face alive, bemused, warm. ”I’m really glad you're here, Dean."

As if it's just as simple as that. 

 

That first day, Sam's quiet. Dean makes the mistake of chattering at him nonstop after they finish eating until Sam clams up and stares at the wall. Dean props Sam up on the couch and pretends to read a bootleg pamphlet about off-grid electrical systems till the words swim and his head aches. He keeps Sam in his peripheral vision, catches him sneaking glances at Dean, around the room, out the front window. Casing the joint, taking it all in. 

With all that pretending to read, Dean has time to sort through the hundred thousand questions all clamoring in his head, divide them into piles: Urgent, Trivial, Delay As Long As Possible, and Hope Like Fuck It Never Comes Up. He picks one. "Hey, Sam?"

Sam's eyes flick over to Dean, and it still makes the little hairs on Dean's neck stand on end every time Sam makes eye contact. 

"Why didn't you talk to me before?"

Sam blinks. “I didn't know I could."

"You didn't—" Dean falls silent, dumbfounded. Of all the possible answers, that wasn't one he was expecting. 

"I thought I'd try it, though," Sam rasps, once-broad shoulders rising in a barely-perceptible shrug. When Sammy was ten, the vengeful spirit of an abused kid made him drink a glass of bleach. Dean cried and honest-to-god pissed himself from fear as he clutched a twitching Sam in the back seat on the way to the ER, begging Sam not to throw it back up and make things worse, pressing thank you kisses into Sam's hair when he swallowed down his retching. Sam's voice was a ghost for weeks afterward. Sam sounds like that now. 

The afternoon passes quietly, but not _snowbound and hobbled and alone in a silent house going slowly crazy_ quiet. More like an _it's a hundred twenty miles till we hit Sioux Falls and the sun is warm through the windshield and the road is rumbling and I'll drive and you'll nap and when you wake up you'll let out a little puff of breath like the waking world is a surprise to you every time and you'll look over at me to check that I'm still there even though I'm driving the car so it's kind of obvious and you'll put your feet up on the dash and I'll remember playing little piggies with your pudgy baby toes because I always remember_ kind of quiet. 

 

Sam doesn't speak again until Dean's tucked them both into bed, half-expecting (half-hoping for) a raised eyebrow, an innuendo, for Sam to slap Dean's hands away as he pulls the sheet up over Sam's chest. Dean curls up, cramped and tense from the cold (it's always cold), and bites his lip, knowing there's no point in going to sleep yet when Sam's nightmares will wake him up soon anyway. 

"Something's changed," the hoarse voice says. 

"The sun went away. 'Cause it's nighttime." Dean's shivering and tight-jawed and tired of dealing with quiet and cryptic Sam, which, come to think of it, isn't that different from teenage Sam. 

Sam turns his head to look at Dean, and Dean thinks he detects just a hint of a jutting jaw, and oh yeah, that's definitely reminiscent of the sulky lanky fifteen year-old Sam once was, speaking a language Dean couldn't comprehend. The moon makes a pale scythe of Sam's side, cuts a dark silhouette. The light seeps into the negative space where Sam isn't. Dean can't see Sam's shadowed face, so the ghost-voice rasps disembodied into the room. "It's not the same as it was before," says the voice in the darkness. "I can talk, if I want to. I can walk places. If something hurts, I can make it stop. It isn't like it was."

Dean's tongue trips over answers and falls silent.

"There was a time. Before. When I couldn't do those things."

“Yeah. There was." 

"Because of Him." Sam's voice is as calm as deep water, a deceptive stillness with currents roiling in the darkness beneath the surface. 

Dean's breath goes heavy and stills in his chest. He'd hoped—it's stupid, now, looking back—he'd hoped that Sam didn't know. That if Sam was this broken, maybe—maybe—"Yeah." 

"But you saved me," Sam says, like Dean's the hero big brother who put a band-aid on his skinned knee. Bile rises in Dean's throat because he's forgotten his lines. 

_As long as I'm around, nothing bad is gonna happen to you._

He said that once; believed it. Never thought through what that meant about what would happen if he _wasn’t around._

"I don't save people," Dean says. "I just kill people. I try to kill the right ones." Dean rolls over, turns his back on Sam. 

When Dean squirms to the far side of the bed, the cold air burrows under the disturbed blankets and cozies up to Dean's goosebumped skin. He hunches there in an unhappy curve even though he can feel Sam's body heat warming the sheets at his back. The solar corona of Dean's baby brother. 

Sam's always shined so goddamn bright.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!

So many times in Dean’s life, he’s woken to a moment of blissful ignorance before he remembers the shitstorm that is his life, before he’s walloped by whatever misfortune he’d gone to sleep with and momentarily forgotten. The past five years have had a lot of that. 

It’s rarer to feel the reverse, like he is this morning. Dean swims up into consciousness, feeling that kind of bleak neutrality that helps him get out of bed in the morning, and then it strikes him like a pounding wave at the shorebreak — Sam. Sam is back. He holds that in his mind for a moment, savoring it. 

Before Dean even opens his eyes, he knows from the unimpeded sprawl of his limbs that he's alone in the bed. Whatever the reason is, it can't be good, so Dean stays where he is, eyes shutting out the world and body slumped in the barren landscape of sheets. 

Until he smells something burning. Which, it turns out, is still a reliable way of getting Dean's attention. 

When Dean walks into the smoke-hazed kitchen and finds Sam fumbling with the camp stove, flames shooting up from an unidentifiable spill on the kitchen counter, he stands and blinks for a moment, processing. Then he walks over to Sam, pulls his hands away from the indignantly sputtering little stove, and dumps a glass of water on the fiery mess. Dean inspects the charred remains of what appears to have been instant oatmeal. 

“Seriously? You burned oatmeal? Seriously?” It’s funny for a moment until Dean thinks it through and it stops being funny at all. 

Dean tries to remain calm as he makes clear to Sam that Sam isn't allowed to touch the stove, because he will set himself on fire and it will be gross and he will die in agony, and Dean will be really angry about it. By the end of it Sam's shoulders are slumped, face mildly glum, which given Sam's usual range of expressiveness is roughly the equivalent of fits of sobbing and rending of garments. 

Dean wants to touch him, comfort him, but he _can’t_.

Sam looks like a dejected little boy, but Dean hasn't forgotten and will _never_ forget that Sam isn't. No matter how broken he is, Sam is a grown man. A grown man who opened up the door and let the devil in. 

There has to be a limit. There has to be something so bad that it will make Dean stop loving Sam. This, nearly destroying the world, and doing it on purpose – this has to be it. 

"I wanted to make breakfast for you," Sam says, small and disappointed. Apparently Sam was paying more attention than Dean thought all those mornings when Dean fired up the burner to make a pitiful approximation of a hot breakfast. “I forgot stoves,” he says nonsensically, mouth a tight, frustrated line. 

Sam's eyes fall on another box on the counter and he seizes it, fusses with a wrapped Pop-Tart until it's reduced to shredded foil and crumbled pastry. “Here." He thrusts it toward Dean — _take, eat_. “Here.” 

It's just not possible. Dean's been filling up the hollowness inside himself with disappointment and doubt until bitterness seeps into his marrow. There's no space left in him to hold the kind of feelings he used to have when Sam was around. And all the things in Sam that made Dean feel that way, they've been stripped away. Whatever's left of Sam is a burned-down building, steel bones looming naked over the ashes of the rest, roof fallen in and nothing inside worth saving. This is the limit, it must be. 

It has to be. Dean looks around desperately, wanting to grab something, wanting to climb a ladder out of here, to escape somehow. If this isn’t it. If this doesn’t change things with Sam. He can’t. What does that even. Dean can’t even finish his own thoughts, doesn’t know where they end. 

The foil packet crinkles in Sam’s urgently offered hand. Sam’s eyes are fierce, imploring. 

Dean takes the Pop-Tart with a sense of helpless finality. "Want to sit on the porch?"

Dean eats the demolished Pop-Tart and gives Sam the other one. The porch swing wails bitterly beneath their combined weight. Sam flexes cold toes, then pulls them up to sit on them. He hides his hands in the sleeves of his hoodie. "Cold."

"Yeah." Dean's fucking freezing in boxers and t-shirt, ready to shiver right out of himself like a snake shedding its skin. Which is why he doesn't complain when Sam silently shifts over on the swing, pressing warm against Dean from knee to shoulder. 

Sam’s so warm. Dean’s been thinking about him like he’s a dead body. But Dean can see the breath puffing out of him. If he looks real close, he can see the goosebumps on the back of Sam’s neck. He wants to breathe warm air on them and he’s almost leaning forward to do it when he regains his senses and pulls back. 

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Where did He go?" Sam squints into the glare that glances off the snow, all John Wayne stoicism. 

"Hell," Dean says. 

Sam nods matter-of-factly like Dean said _Cincinnati_. "Is he coming back?"

"No," Dean lie-hopes. "Not ever." And really, there's something kind of wrong here, because Dean should be asking the questions. Dean should be getting answers. "What do you remember?"

"Lots of things," whispers Sam’s ghost of a voice. One shoulder rises and falls in the barest shrug.

It's started to snow again, big fat flakes all clean and new, covering up the track of Dean's footprints in the front yard. "What's the first thing you remember?" 

The tip of Sam's nose is pink from cold. "Walking. Going away from a building, and toward a road. Losing my footing, walking on soft things. He never looked down, you know, but I heard them crack when I stepped on them." 

Dean accidentally stepped on a rat once, felt it squish, a wet crunch, wriggling then still. Dean doesn't like rats. Dean's healing leg aches. His heart thumps. He turns his face and breathes and Sam smells like Sam. 

"Before that. Before Lucifer." Sam doesn't so much as twitch at the name, and Dean's glad this isn't going to be a whole Voldemort thing. 

Come on, Sammy, Dean thinks. You got this. He knows the story of Sam’s first childhood memories as well as he knows his own. 

"Before." The shape of Sam's mouth is thin and tight, brow furrowed, gaze turned inward, and whatever he sees there isn't something Dean wants to imagine. After long moments slide away, Sam shakes his head thoughtfully. "I don't know. It was so long ago." 

"Four years." A lot of things can happen in four years.

Sam snorts something that might have been a laugh in a past life, and Dean has to tamp down the urge to punch him, because what does Sam have to be laughing about? "No," Sam says with a wry certainty that pours cold water on Dean's rage. "It was longer." 

And Dean can’t face the things that are beginning to click into place in his mind right now — the memory of his time in hell, and how the months expanded into years, and how even then he didn’t forget who he was, didn’t forget _what_ he was, didn’t have to ask if he was a person. He can’t think about it now, how long it would take to forget how to move or speak or blink. How long buried deep inside your own body, voiceless, motionless, powerless, watching someone else destroy the world with what were once your own hands. 

Dean can’t do that math right now so he presses his foot against the porch until his leg begins to ache. 

In the yard, the crisp outlines of Dean's feet have disappeared, and his nose begins to run from the winter air that stings his face.

#

The sheets are cool and the bed is wide. Dean has space to stretch out his limbs, doesn't immediately run up against long legs and arms, doesn't slowly begin the morning with the rhythm of Sam's heartbeat against his ear. Usually Dean tries to wake up before Sam, in case Sam decides to go destroy the world before breakfast, but it's hard to keep up. Dragging a broken leg around makes Dean crash hard when he finally hits the pillow at night, and Sam is inexplicably, irritatingly energetic these days.

Sam's in the living room, pretending to read the M through O encyclopedia and sitting as ramrod straight as the tiny Sammy who'd tense up defensively after eating the last of the Twinkies. Dean doesn't realize why until he tips down the encyclopedia and sees his brother staring back at him. 

_Really_ his brother. Not the calm countenance in the white suit, all its expressions and movements foreign and wrong in Sam's body. Not the scruffy Unabomber Dean's been living with these last months. Sam's clean-shaven, baby-faced, and Dean's gut reaction lingers on shock (recognition, affection, greeting a loved one at the train station after a long journey) before swiftly plummeting into rage when he's struck by the image of Sam with a razor in his hand. There's a nick at Sam's jawline, the barest crust of blood.

Dean's "What the fuck were you thinking, you brain-dead fucking moron?" does not go over well. This is becoming something of a theme with them: Sam pushes, Dean restrains, screaming ensues, and still they're trapped together in a falling-down house in a falling-down world. Sam, wait for me and I'll shave your beard if you really want to look like a twelve year-old again. Sam, don't fucking go up on the roof even if it is fucking leaking, and give me that hammer right fucking now. Sam, if you ever attempt to carry me down the front stairs again I'm gonna castrate you in your sleep. Listen to me. Do what I tell you. Stop doing things that are going to get you in trouble just because you're a defiant little dipshit who doesn't know what's best for him. 

#

Mice nibble at the crumbs in the bottom of the last box of stale graham crackers, and Dean still moves at a snail's-pace, slowed by a healing leg and unmedicated pain, but it's go out or starve and Dean doesn't want to starve any more than the mice do. He's just an animal, really, incapable of moral decision-making but stupidly committed to eating and sleeping and breathing for as long as his body will carry him, even when the righteous thing to do would be to lay down and die in penance. He’s vermin, a scavenger, picking the bones of civilization clean and sucking out the marrow. 

Dean folds himself uncomfortably into the garaged car and begins the slow process of sweet-talking the cold engine into starting. He jumps in his seat when Sam raps at the window. "What?" Dean says, muffled through the glass. He doesn't have the patience for another battle over whether it's fair to leave Sam at home when he goes out. Sam twirls his wrist: roll the window down. With a sigh, Dean does. "What is it?"

Sam leans his shaggy head in through the window, aggravating Dean's admittedly flexible sense of personal space. "I should drive."

Dean snorts. "That's a good one, tell me another."

The door groans when Sam swings it open and shoves at Dean's shoulder. "Move over. I'll do it. Just tell me where to go."

"No, Sam, you can't drive."

"Why not?"

"You don't know how."

"I know how to do other things. I remember how to tie my shoes. I remember how to clean a gun." Another example of Sam touching things he is _not_ supposed to touch, and the fallout from Dean finding Sam with a Glock still has them falling into icy silence on occasion. 

"You just can't, Sam."

"But that's not fair." Sam seems honestly confused. Dean can see the gears ticking in his brain, trying to parse how Dean can fail to bend to the sacred logic of fairness. " _Why_?" 

"Because I say so!" 

"You're—" Sam searches for a word. "— bossy!" he finally explodes. Sam starts, stiffens, and then rocks with the impact when Dean launches himself at Sam. 

It's the most awkward bear hug imaginable, Dean half-in and half-out of the car with his face crushed against Sam's chest, arms squeezing his middle. "You're so fucking irritating, Sam." Dean spreads his hands on Sam's back. "You have _always_ been so fucking irritating." Joy blossoms in Dean like a firework, all colors and light, burning like it's too much for his body to contain. It's not a feeling Dean ever expected to experience again. He doesn't deserve it, it's not his to feel, this joy, but he furtively steals it from the universe anyway, and he can't stop smiling as he does it. He curls his fists in Sam's flannel, knuckles sharp against Sam's chest. "You're the most annoying person I've ever met in my entire goddamn life." 

Sam's hand chases after Dean, clutches his sleeve when Dean pulls away. Sam's smile is slight, tentative, like he knows something good has happened but doesn't understand what it is. "So can I drive?" 

Dean settles back into the seat. The vinyl squeaks. The cold engine is finally warming into a throaty purr. "No. But if it makes you feel better I wouldn't have let you before, either. 'Cause it's my goddamn car." He thumps the passenger seat. "Get in." 

Sam gets in.

The car seems the right size when Sam's in it, at once a vast expanse of golden field beside a highway and a tight nest of blankets in a warm cabin battened tight against the wind. A place where a man can finally breathe.


End file.
